Free Memorizing You by Dan Skinner

time’.”
    Now I was surprised. “You mean you’ve never…” The question hung, and
    I knew I’d done it again.
    He was blushing. I could see the color beneath the tan of his cheeks.
    “Shit. I’m sorry again!” I apologized. “I should just keep my mouth shut.”
    We walked out the door and back into the sunshine, squinting against the glare. I couldn’t have felt any more obtuse than at the moment. He walked to the shade of an oak and sat. “It’s funny,” he said, as I sat next to him. “The guys on the team think I have a girlfriend from Bayless High because my cousin, Gina, came to one of the games wearing one of their T-shirts. They saw her hugging me excitementImy afterward.” He wrapped his arms around his knees and looked at me, seriously. “I’ve never told them anything different.”
    “We just assume you jocks get everything you want.” It was the truth.
    “But I’m a bit different, too, as you remember?”
    “Yeah,” I agreed, “but still.”
    “I get what you mean. Sex is so easy, you could get it from anybody in the right circumstances.” His gaze went up to the clouds. “And a lot of people do that. They just have sex with the first person who comes along who’s willing. It doesn’t matter if they’re attracted to them, or even really know them. They just want to have sex. It becomes just a meaningless act.”
    That hit home.
    His eyes became intense. “Call me crazy, but I think sex is the absolute most intimate thing you can share with someone. You’re making yourself naked and vulnerable to another human being. It should be an act of sharing with someone you know and have feelings for. You’re giving a part of yourself to them, and they’re giving a part of themselves to you. It doesn’t get any more intimate than that. It’s not just an act.”
    I had never even thought about it to that degree. He seemed to view it with such clarity.
    “Years from now, they’ll look back on the experiences of their lives and their ‘first time’ will be no different than when they got a baseball glove, or a doll,” he continued. “I want that, when I’m in my fifties and I look back to my first kiss, I think, Wow! I want to remember it as being amazing. That it’s one of the most special moments of my life. I want to remember the person I share that with to be important to me. Not just someone who happened along at the right time. It’s not just an act of the body. It’s an act of the heart.”
    I think I must have stared at him for an eternity. I could hear the droning of bees, the wind rustling through the trees and the buzzing of electric lines. In all those seconds I had realized what a unique person Ryan was. Unlike anyone I had met. And what was on the surface truly hid what was beneath it.
    “What? Did I bum you outer subjects.
    I shook my head. “Not at all.” I looked back at the barn. “But you got me thinking.”
     

CHAPTER SEVEN
    It was a brilliant idea. When we approached Ryan’s father with it, he jumped on it. The idea struck me as I listened to Ryan talk with such a keen insight and intellectual capacity that I knew how smart he was. That he was failing two subjects in school was incomprehensible to me. English Lit and World History. Two subjects I breezed through. His dad took the matter seriously enough to look for a tutor rather than leave him to the devices of just-out-of-college summer school teachers. A fairly costly solution.
    Ryan had convinced me on the idea of adding compost-mulching services to my business. Taking yard scraps and turning them into something I could sell was a no-brainer. I just needed the set-up. I already had a place to do it. The old garage in our backyard. It was only used for storage and was a perfect size for the set up. I just needed someone who knew how to do it to help me build it.
    His father shook my hand. He was delighted that I would help his son with his studies during the summer in exchange for Ryan helping me